In a rather short time, Android has become one of the most popular and widespread Smartphone operating systems around today. It seems that just about every person has a Smartphone device sitting in their pockets, although, with the endless number of snazzy complex apps around, very often people seem to ignore the simpler, yet extremely useful, applications that are waiting for you. We all know where to find pictures of cats doing funny things, or how to turn your phone into some top mobile casino. We all know about the pleasures of flinging kamikaze birds into unsuspecting evil pigs, or jumping and sliding through obstacles in order to escape the dreaded Temple. But what about the more practical features, that will help you in your daily life? Here are three perfect apps to make your life a little easier.

Most of the smartphones available in the market are Android phones. Except for Nokia and BlackBerry, most of the known mobile phone manufacturers like Samsung, LG, HTC and Sony are mostly manufacturing phones that run on Android. Hence, it is not that easy to purchase an Android phone as there are so many options available. Before you go ahead and purchase yourself an Android phone, you should consider some points so that you get the best phone for yourself. Here are five things that you need to consider when purchasing new Android phone:

1. Android
There are many versions of Android operating system. The oldest is Éclair and the newest is Ice Cream Sandwich. As far as performance is concerned, the ICS Android OS offers the best overall performance. Only a few mobile phones are running on Android ICS. Most of the Android ICS OS phones are expensive whereas the smartphones running on older versions like GingerBread and Froyo are cheaper.

2. CPU
An Android phone with slow CPU will make your phone perform sluggishly. Such a phone will take longer to start or finish any task and can frustrate you easily. The faster the CPU, the faster will be the performance of the phone. Dual core and quad core phones deliver snappy performance. However, such phones are expensive. If you want to purchase a decent phone, the ideal choice would be to purchase a phone with minimum 1GHz processor.

3. Battery life
You need to read the review of the phone to learn about its battery life. Before you purchase the phone, it should be very clear about the battery performance of the phone. It should offer at least 6 hours of talk time on 3G.

4. Display size
The larger the size of the display, the more resources such as battery and CPU it can consume. Since the Android OS is very versatile, apart from using your phone for normal usage, you can even install computer OS like Windows 7 on your phone. Hence, the ideal size of the display should be 4.0 inches.

5. Design
Things like size, shape and material of the external body are very important things to consider before buying an Android phone. As compared to metal body phone, a plastic body phone can be lightweight. Get a phone that fits in your hands easily. Avoid purchasing huge sized phones as it will be troublesome to get the phone out of your pocket.

Motoluxe is a midrange phone from Motorola. The phone measures 117.7 x 60.5 x 9.9mm and weighs 123.6g. It is a very pretty phone. It is slim and has metallic elements on its body. It has a solid and sturdy appeal with soft touch finish.

The Motoluxe has a large capacitive display that measures 4.0 inches. It has a display resolution of 480 x 854 pixels with a pixel density of 245ppi. This enables you to view crisp and clear images. However, it becomes difficult to view the display outdoors even if you set the brightness to its highest setting. Below the display, on the left hand side, you can find a large notification light. A blinking light is what you see whenever you receive an SMS or miss a call.

The Motoluxe fails miserably when it comes to performance. You will experience great deal of sluggishness and the phone tends to lag from time to time. This becomes more evident when there few widgets on the homescreen. The reason behind such a performance is the 800MHz processor and Adreno 200. Motoluxe has 1GB ROM and 512MB RAM onboard. The external memory can support up to 32GB of microSD. The Android GingerBread is what you get on this phone.

The 8MP autofocus camera can be used for taking above average photos. The images lack clarity and detail. It takes nearly three second for the camera to be ready to take new photo after snapping one photo. It can record only VGA quality videos. The music player is quite as it has a unique feature of automatically downloading lyrics and album art while playing any song. The video player only supports playing MP4 videos of not more than 800 x 480 pixels.

When it comes to web browsing, you will experience choppiness while accessing heavy sites through the preloaded browser. However, web browsing becomes a better experience on Motoluxe when you disable Adobe Flash. HSDPA at 7.2Mbps and HSUPA at 5.76Mbps are the speeds that the Motoluxe offers you. Other features include Wi-Fi, DLNA, aGPS, stereo FM radio and Bluetooth. The standard Li-Ion 1400mAh battery gives nearly 400 hours of standby time on 3G and over 4 hours of talk time on 3G.

Samsung Transform Ultra is a midrange handset with remarkable features like 1GHz processor and large display. The phone measures 116 x 61 x 14mm and weighs 139g. The build quality of the phone is good. The exterior of the phone is made up of good quality plastic.

The display of the Samsung Transform Ultra measures 3.5 inches. It has a display resolution 320 x 480 pixel and has a pixel density of 165ppi. Below the display, you can find four physical buttons. The display is quite bright and easily viewable under sunlight. When it comes to design, this midrange phone will impress with its side-sliding QWERTY keyboard. The keys on the keyboard as spaced out well. If you do not want to use physical keyboard, you can make use of the Android Gingerbread onscreen keyboard or Swype typing feature.

Samsung Transform Ultra is an Android device. It runs on Android Gingerbread OS. Even though it’s a midrange phone, it is graced with 1GHz processor, 512MB RAM, 1GB ROM and Adreno 205 GPU. The internal memory of the phone is 952MB. The phone comes preloaded with 2GB microSD card. The external memory can read up to 32GB of microSD.

The 3MP camera at the rear comes with LED flash. There is a front-facing camera as well. The rear camera is capable of snapping average quality photos which is exactly what you can expect from midrange phones. When there is enough lighting available, the photos appear quite acceptable. Nothing much can be told about shooting photos in low lighting conditions. Videos of VGA quality can be shot on Samsung Transform Ultra. The Android media player can play all kinds of video files except for DivX files.

The Samsung Transform Ultra’s Android web browser is able to load pages quickly. It is Flash enabled and you can enjoy features like pan, zoom, and double-tap while browsing on the web. It is a CDMA device which supports 3G on Rev.A network. Other connectivity features include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and aGPS. The Li-Ion 1500mAh battery gives a talk time of nearly 7 hours.

The cell phone market is flooded with umpteen numbers smartphones from various brands. For those who cannot afford such high-end phones, Samsung has released an affordable phone called Samsung Brightside. It measures 111 x 60 x 14mm and weighs 122g. If you are looking for a phone primarily for texting, you can consider this phone as a good option.

The display of the Samsung Brightside measures 3.1 inches and it has a display resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. It has a pixel density of 129ppi. The colors appear bland and the viewing angles are dismal. The contents of the display are hardly visible when you view it outdoors. Even though the phone has got capacitive display, while using it you may feel it is a resistive display. When you slide the display to the right, you can access the landscape sliding keyboard. The keyboard is very user-friendly and you will be impressed by its responsiveness.

The Samsung Brightside has got a BREW-based UI. It is very simple and easy to use. The internal storage of the phone is 256MB and it is powered with 128MB RAM. The external memory card slot can read up to 32GB of microSD. SNS integration, organizer and document viewer are some of the preloaded apps on the phone. The 3.2MP camera can snap decent outdoors when there is enough lighting available. However, the quality of the photos becomes dismal in low lighting conditions. With a maximum resolution of 176 x 144, the phone can record only low quality videos.

The Opera Mini browser comes preloaded on the Samsung Brightside. Since it is not a GSM, it makes use of CDMA network. You can connect to the web on 3G. The standard Li-Po 1000 mAh battery delivers over 340 hours of standby time and talk time of over 6 hours.

Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile are all providing their subscribers 4G internet connectivity. When we used 3G internet connection on out phone, we felt that it is the fastest internet connectivity that one can avail on their smartphone. However, the 4G network has turned out to be even faster. So let us try to understand more about 4G.

What is 4G?
4G stands for fourth generation wireless. This technology enables you to do VOIP, internet browsing, play games and stream HD videos. Before 4G, 2G and 3G wireless were known to the people. 2G is all about switching from analog to digital transmissions. This technology brought to the world facilities like sending and receiving SMS and email on their phone. 3G technology brought features like global roaming, video calling, sharing the same data network with others and high speed web connectivity. The average speed that you can avail through 3G can range from 600 kilobytes per second to 1.4Megabytes per second. When you compare 3G with 4G, you will be able to achieve the same but with more speed and bandwidth.

According to ITU (International Telecommunication Union), 4G is fast paced internet connection that offers speeds of 100Mbps whichever place you go. This is high mobility for 4G. When it comes to low mobility which means Wi-Fi range, you can get up to 1Gbps speed. However, most of the cellular network service provider’s 4G speeds do not come any close.

Here are some of the technologies that are available in United States. You should be aware of it because these technologies are made available as 4G:

1. WiMax
WiMax is nothing but an extension of Wi-Fi connection which means it offers high speed wireless web connection on a wide range of devices. Sprint is offering this service as 4G which offers 128Mbps HDSPA and 56Mbps HSUPA.

2. LTE (Long Term Evolution)
This is the 4G service offered by Verizon which offers 100Mbps HDSPA and 50Mbps HSUPA. The LTE service cannot be actually called 4G but exclusively refers to 3GPP LTE. LTE Advanced which is yet to launch may meet the 4G standards by offering HSDPA of 1Gbps.

3. HSPA+ (Evolved High Speed Packet Access)
HSPA+ is the 4G service offered by T-Mobile. Sprint and Verizon offers the same service as 3G data. Even though HSPA+ offers high speed connectivity, the speed is much less as compared to LTE and WiMax as it offers 56Mbps HSUPA and 22Mbps HSDPA.

Here comes a new and unique smartphone that aspires to introduce new genre of phones into the market. The Samsung Galaxy Beam is a phone that comes all the latest features that you can see in other smartphones. Then, what makes this phone unique? It comes with an inbuilt HD projector. This pocket-size movie theater weighs 145.3g and measures 124 x 64.2 x 12.5mm.

The Galaxy Beam has an attractive orange band running on the sides of the phone. The phone’s exterior is made up of non-slippery soft plastic. It has a got 4-inch capacitive touchscreen display with a display resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. It has got a pixel density of 233ppi. Above the display, there is 1.3MP front-facing camera. On the right side of the phone, you can find the power/display lock button. Also, you can find the on/off button for the projector. On the left, there is volume controller. The microUSB slot, SIM card slot and microSD slot can be accessed through the sides and are provided with protective flaps.

Let’s talk about the USP of the phone – the inbuilt HD projector. The 15 lumen pico projector comes with maximum resolution of 640 x 360 pixels. You can easily watch a two and half hour movie and still have some power left in the battery. You can get good viewing experience when you the video or presentation through the phone’s projector in a dark room or dimly lit room. It also come with an easy-to-use Projector app.

The Samsung Galaxy Beam runs on Android v2.3 (can be upgraded to Android v4.0). The phone is powered up with dual-core 1GHz processor along with 768MB RAM. The internal storage is 8GB and the external microSD can detect up 32GB of microSD. The 5MP camera that is provided with LED flash is able to snap decent photos. However, its capability of recording 720p HD videos is below our expectations. The phone could have easily supported 1080p HD recording since it houses 1GHz dual-core CPU. The loudspeaker of the phone emits impressive sound output. It also supports playing videos all the known video formats.

The default Android web browser on Samsung Galaxy Beam works well. It can loads heavy websites with Flash content without any delay. You can connect to the web on 3G at speeds of 14.4 Mbps HSDPA and HSUPA 5.76 Mbps. Other connectivity features include Wi-Fi (with DLNA), Bluetooth v3.0 and aGPS. As of now, Samsung has not mentioned anything on the talk time and standby time of 2000mAh Li-Ion battery.